The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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26 ■ THE WOLFPACKER The building was actually the pet project and longtime vision of NC State alumni David Clark, a turn-of-the-20th-century graduate who became a textile publishing magnate and incurable athletics meddler. He insisted that NC State have an indoor arena to rival North Carolina's Woollen Gym and the newly built Duke Indoor Stadium, and sold the idea by saying the state's farmers needed an indoor audito- rium in case it rained during the annual Agriculture Week held on State's campus. The original projected cost was $300,000. Clark even bought the first load of struc- tural steel from the Ingalls Iron Works in Birmingham, Ala., in 1943. The school used WPA workers that were building Broughton Hall to erect a skeleton of the coliseum. However, that start on the build- ing nearly became unusable, standing pro- tected by just a thin coat of paint for the duration of World War II and the first three years of Case's tenure. The donation was probably a decent tax write-off for Mary Katherine Reynolds Babcock, who became one of the world's richest women in 1936 when she inherited $30 million from the estate of her late fa- ther, tobacco tycoon R.J. Reynolds. She wrote a check in 1943 that etched the name of her uncle, William Neal Reynolds, on the building. He had raised his late broth- er's four young children after R.J. Reyn- olds and his wife both died while their children were still adolescents. "Uncle Will," as the elder Reynolds was known, was not a basketball fan, but the product that he sold ensured the coliseum's completion and was constantly present in the arena until the 1990s. Babcock asked her uncle if it would be okay to make the donation and his reply, via handwritten let- ter, was: "I know of no more worthy cause in the state." The state of North Carolina added an- other $100,000 to the pot and the federal government gave $99,999, as long as the new structure always served as the home for the school's ROTC programs and pro- vided open space for drills, a rifle range for training and underground access for a fallout shelter. The final phase of construction began in June 1948, and it was not quite complete for the first game of the 1949-50 season, when some of the 11,020 spectators had to avoid wet paint and sit on bare concrete risers to see the Wolfpack's 67-47 victory. Senior Vic Bubas, who had walked by the construction site nearly every day to see what progress was being made, missed the first two shots taken in the new gym, but stuck to his goal of scoring the first of many thousands of baskets that were eventually made in what was the largest on- campus arena in the country and the largest coliseum of any kind between Atlantic City and New Orleans. "Damn, boy," Case said when Bubas returned to the bench, "you weren't going to let anybody else touch the ball until you made the first basket, were you?" "Hell no," Bubas told him. Later in that inaugural year, the Wolf- pack advanced to the first Final Four in school history. The Old Homeplace It's hard not to think of Reynolds as a family homeplace. For some of us, it's where we made relationships, both last- ing and fleeting, while camping its out- door sidewalks for football and basket- ball tickets. It's where we signed up for classes, long before online registration was available. It's where we were exposed to real, and affordable, culture. It's where we graduated. Some of us even saw Mr. and Ms. Wuf get married there on Feb. 28, 1981, during halftime of an NC State-Wake Forest men's game, a ceremony officiated by the Demon Deacon mascot. There were Presidents and candidates who captivated us. John F. Kennedy cam- paigned there in 1960 just before he became a household name. Lyndon Johnson was greeted by Confederate flags and a testy crowd when he gave a speech on farm sub- sidies in Reynolds just after he signed the Civil Rights Act in the hot summer of 1964. Speaking of hot? On Sept. 5, 1985, Ronald Reagan shed his jacket during a speech on tax reform because the un-air- conditioned old barn was blazing under the strain of a full house. Candidate Bill Clin- ton sneaked in after a speech at next-door Stewart Theater to walk around the empty coliseum and go to the bathroom. He re- turned after his presidency to address a full house during an Emerging Issues Forum. Candidate Barack Obama clinched the Democratic nomination while giving a speech there on May 6, 2008, by winning the Indiana and North Carolina primaries that day. He was informed of the news in Reynolds' basement by his campaign's communication director, former NC State soccer goalie Robert Gibbs. "I can't tell you how amazing it was, that night, to be there in that special place where I spent so much time during col- lege," Gibbs said. "It was the perfect set- ting." Obama returned as President two times, once at Reynolds and once at the Isenhour Tennis Complex. There were speakers galore, from archi- tect Frank Lloyd Wright to author Buck- minster Fuller, an annual visit by farmers across the state for the Farm and Home Week, and symposia of every kind. The Friends of the College concert series brought culture on a budget to Raleigh and invited a broad array of entertainment into the massive auditorium. On the night Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to move missiles out of Cuba — ending the tense standoff known as the Cuban Missile Crisis — the Lenin- grad Philharmonic Orchestra held a concert at Reynolds. "They had been touring up and down the East Coast, and had been receiving a very cold reception," said longtime direc- tor Henry Bowers in the book Raleigh's Reynolds Coliseum. "The whole world was tense. The very day they played here, Khrushchev agreed to move the missiles. There was a tremendous reception for the Reynolds Coliseum opened in 1949, and now it is closed to undergo the first full renovation in the building's history. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE MEDIA RELATIONS